West Yorkshire is the first region in the country to evaluate this new test and if successful, doctors in the area will be first in line to make it available to patients on a fast-track pathway for suspected cancer. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust are both participating in the evaluation at the secondary care level and GPs in Wakefield and North Kirklees are also offering the test to eligible patients.
In England, GPs refer over 2.5 million people suspected of having cancer to the ‘two-week wait’ urgent cancer referral pathway every year. More than 90 per cent of suspected cancer referrals made by GPs in England do not have cancer, but confirmation of this requires multiple expensive, time consuming and stressful diagnostic tests. The PinPoint test is designed to reduce the number of patients needing these tests, thereby reducing patient anxiety, pressure on doctors and maximising the use of diagnostic capacity.
The unique potential of the PinPoint Test is that by identifying those at lowest risk of cancer, it is able to remove up to 20% of patients from the urgent referral pathway – that’s 500,000 people per year that can be given the ‘all clear’ for cancer without ever needing to go to a hospital. That means less pressure on the system and shorter waiting lists for those needing urgent medical care.
PinPoint Chief Scientist, Dr Richard Savage, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 25, when he was studying for his PhD at the University of Cambridge. This personal experience of cancer led him to research how a very complex set of data could be boiled down to one critical piece of information - how likely a patient is to have cancer. He said:
“The NHS ‘two-week wait’ has been so effective at catching cancer early that GPs are referring more and more people, just to be safe. But the reality is the vast majority of people referred to the two-week wait don’t actually have cancer. In fact, over 90% of people referred don’t have cancer but they all have to go through the stress of hospital visits and waiting for appointments before finally getting the ‘all clear’. The more people are referred, the longer the waiting lists and the longer it takes for those patients that do have cancer to be diagnosed.”
This test will help to relieve the increasing pressure on hospitals caused by Covid and other increasing demand for services by enabling them to identify those patients who need to be seen most urgently. The test is being phased in gradually so availability across the region may vary, but patients are encouraged to ask their doctor about the PinPoint Test evaluation. Every volunteer will play a vital role in bringing us closer to delivering better cancer diagnostics for the future.
More information can be found on the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance website.